Although all by me, DAVID GOULDING, there are different moods and, I hope you'll agree, a variety of content. I do not know my individual "style": that is for others to see or judge. It's up to them and fine by me! The one thing (or two things) I do try to avoid is being elitist (writing for the 'special few' who read and praise each other's work) or populist (the opposite...or I don't want to define this in case I offend!)

What I do believe is that writing "light verse" does not bar you from producing more serious stuff, and vice versa

There is past and there is future The present never is or was or will be Heraclitus was right

SCHIZO

His schizophrenia came and went Through variable health and night and day, Through coffee hours and menial bathroom rites, Through warm duty times with pets and family, And then to radioed travel and repeating work With convivial splashes; even his sofa divided between blinkered reading and his blind TV.

So many lives, selves, characters to play: His personality not split but splintered And sent to infinity, like big-banged galaxies Cavorting away and away from each other for ever.

He could not learn that he was only one, Though all his parts would still die on the same day.

SLEEP

They say Macbeth has murdered sleep may be, but I wish I could I can’t get close enough

I don’t slip into sleep sleep slips, slips, slips away disappearing beyond an ever edgy horizon a watery cloud not seen but sly rumour says it's there, not far and I must believe all rumours or I’d be eye-poppingly awake forever or stand eyeless as a hollow statue unseeing and unseen unmoving and unmoved all still, no breeze or breath again

STORIES

My own memory is without me in it

I do not feature

Just a lot of regurgitated stories

That may have a crumb of truth

When passed on they survive

But ever fainter, in another’s failing memory

But collect them: not for hoarding but dispersal

If they’re not told now

They never will be

SUNSET

Sunset on a guilty day with no dreams collected. The fall of night is only the pre-dawn curtain where resolutions offer sumptuous fairy tales.

Instead: the morning twitter of sanity: a black ripple of a shadow on grey water. The only certainty is drowning in a trivial lake and coming up for breath again to see the setting sun.

NIGHT WALK I walked one night in town,

Passed 50 men if they were a day.

Glared past one who hated his wife.

Danced past another in love for the ninth time.

Stared red-eyed at the tv watcher.

Grinned at another without any money. They all get hungry and eat.

Winked at the suit who’d come from his mistress.

Scowled at the prim one just because it was Sunday.

One was boss-eyed – perhaps I’d been drinking.

Dragged past another who lived like a habit. They all get thirsty and drink

I jumped past the one who was getting promoted.

Had a job getting past the one with eight children.

I smiled a bit at the man with no clothes on.

And I think I made the man with the dog itch. They all get frightened and hate

THE HEART TICKS

The heart ticks whilst no clock beats. The life moves on though curtains are drawn, not caring whether the day-light sun pours bright or filtered onto north or south, or is moon-bounced and sickly flickering east or west.

The cell splits to grow and sub-divide The organ forms to be a part of you, that is itself, in part, a part of swirling gaseous all or nothing. And what’s complete then? Never you who cannot see today the microscopic stars Or feel the dying atoms of your distant brain.

Then float with the ceaseless movement and sink with straight-lined circles and with those spiralled ripples into tiny space. Do not grieve for lost visions that have never been; when, after all, you are the abstract movement of an instant comet: gone before your own arrival.

when daffodils die

when daffodils die next winter is seen when crocuses cry grey suffocates green